Archives for 2016

Recent­ly I was look­ing for this pic­ture of an art­ful­ly rust­ed steam engine that I took dur­ing a cross-country trip in 2009.

Por­tion of the Engines for the Wake Robin.

Rather than dig through the many thou­sands of pho­tographs on the back-up serv­er, I searched through the series of blog entries titled It’s a Big Dam Coun­try that I wrote while on that road trip. When I began that trip I was run­ning very hard, and very fast, and very much away. I was run­ning from myself and my itch­ing demons. I was run­ning on pro­fes­sion­al advice. I was mak­ing no progress while stand­ing in the mid­dle of the smok­ing crater that I had made of my life. My ther­a­pist — against all the rules of ther­a­py — actu­al­ly sug­gest­ed that I go ahead and run for a while, to see what it felt like to move again. So I did. I packed up my lit­tle blue car with a hand­ful of road snacks, my spe­cial pil­low, and every scrap of cam­era gear that I owned, then set out on the finest fool’s errand I could con­jure: To attend the grad­u­a­tion par­ty of my old­est niece two weeks hence in the city of Pitts­burgh and along the way to take as many pic­tures of as many dams as I could find. [Read more…]

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July was a thin month for books. I had a week in Port Townsend for the Cen­trum writer’s con­fer­ence and some per­son­al issues to attend to. But I did get through a few things.

Books I Read:

The Hatred of Poetry — Ben Lerner (2016)

The most often quot­ed bit in the reviews of this book begins: ‘Many more peo­ple agree they hate poet­ry’ Ben Lern­er writes, ‘than can agree what poet­ry is.’
Lern­er goes on to read the prob­lem of poet­ry in neo-platonic terms. That poet­ry is always bound to fail because we are for­ev­er com­par­ing a writ­ten piece of poet­ry to some Ide­al that we hold. He goes on to par­tial­ly dis­man­tle this Ide­al by con­sid­er­ing the prob­lems of how we have set up the Ide­al in a world in which the Ide­al is nev­er has nev­er exist­ed.
It takes about 2 hours to read this — and at $8.50 its over-priced for some­thing that runs less than a 100 pages. (List price is $12.) I’m not sor­ry that I bought it and cer­tain­ly not sor­ry that I read it. But I’m also not sure that I got my money’s worth. Must be the phi­los­o­phy degree that snuck up behind me and said “That’s just the Pla­ton­ic Ide­al and as an epis­te­mol­o­gy it’s pret­ty sim­plis­tic, sure­ly poet­ry is more com­plex that that.”* Sur­pris­ing return to my orig­i­nal course of study *

Bukowski in a Sundress — Kim Addonizio (2016)

I was hop­ing to real­ly like this book of essays. There are a cou­ple — par­tic­u­lar­ly those that involve the end of her mother’s life — that strike me as deeply felt and filled with the great ambiva­lence that so many of us feel toward our moth­ers as we close in on the age that they were when we first knew them adult-to-adult and they con­tin­ue to advance into the future ahead of us. Many of the oth­er essays are sim­ply about behav­ing bad­ly into your mid­dle age and don’t speak to me. I gave up eat­ing, drink­ing, and fuck­ing like one of the boys a long time ago.
Any­way. It hasn’t changed may opin­ion of her poet­ry, which I’ve always liked. Go read that if you want to see how well Kim can write. * Maybe not worth the price of admis­sion for most of my read­ers. *

The Fran Leibowitz Reader — Fran Leibowitz (1994)

Fran holds up fair­ly well even though most of these pieces were writ­ten decades ago. Her cur­mud­geon­ly dis­re­gard for the niceties of soci­ety are uni­ver­sal and eter­nal. Chil­dren are still too often seen and heard in places that ought to be the province of adults. Smok­ing is still one of the joys of adult­hood — though I gave it up 10 years ago. A few of these essays are hope­less­ly dat­ed, but some stand up to the pas­sage of time even when the top­ic under dis­cus­sion is no longer in exis­tence. For exam­ple: How to be a Direc­to­ry Ser­vice. We may not have Direc­to­ry Assis­tance any more but we have Cus­tomer Sup­port call cen­ters and the lessons for the tru­ly gift­ed sup­port staff are the same. * clas­sics of snark *

Nightmare Stacks — Charles Stross (2016)

Each sto­ry in the Laun­dry Files series has upped the ante and the lev­el of hor­ror and the lev­el of threat. Until at this point it’s near­ly impos­si­ble to top the pre­vi­ous act. Giv­en Mr Stross’s pen­chant for burn­ing down the build­ing at the end of each book, just before the hero man­ages to save earth but bare­ly, there are not a lot of build­ings left. Alex (the genius mathematician/vampire) and Peter (the apoc­a­lyp­ti­cal­ly savvy vic­ar) are sent to Leeds. Because where else would the apoc­a­lypse hap­pen? The sto­ry goes on to become most­ly a satire with a twist of the goth girl/vampire urban romance. Except that there are, of course, ancient and vicious beings intent of destroy­ing the earth and enslav­ing it’s pop­u­la­tion. I gave up — it’s just too much of much­ness with the pre­vi­ous incar­na­tions. Once upon a time… know­ing that a book would deliv­ery the same sort of sto­ry and the same sort of char­ac­ters doing the same sorts of things with the same lev­el of humor appealed to me. (Ter­ry Pratch­ett, Piers Antho­ny, Spi­der Robin­son, et al) but late­ly I’ve begun to find it less enchant­i­ng. * still a good yarn, but the same col­or as the last one *

Books I Listened to:

Pride and Prejudice — Jane Austen (1813/2015)

When I read this in high school I just didn’t under­stand it. But now, oh my god, the car­i­ca­tures are price­less pieces of work. This ver­sion is nar­rat­ed by Rosamund Pike and her voic­es are dead­pan and reveal­ing, each one appro­pri­ate to the char­ac­ter. Even her Mr. Dar­cy is near to per­fec­tion; com­ing off as both proud and shy. The shy part being the one that most inter­preters of the role don’t con­vey. * Maybe I now get the appeal of Austen? *

I also con­tin­ued to lis­ten to Sher­lock Holmes. It goes on for­ev­er…

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… is an old com­put­er term for remov­ing all of the soft­ware from the hard­ware and start­ing over again. Back when we could rm -rf we would occa­sion­al­ly find that a sys­tem had got itself into a non-recoverable state and need to be rebuilt from the ground up in order to func­tion again. Or on a hap­pi­er note when a project fin­ished we often wiped the soft­ware off of the hard­ware and repur­posed it for the next project.
While sys­tems have become much more resilient than they used to be, and rm -rf is rarely avail­able to the aver­age user, a com­pete wipe down of the bug­gy sys­tem using rm -rf’s new­er rel­a­tive, reset to fac­to­ry set­tings, is still the only solu­tion to cer­tain prob­lems. My iPhone got into one of those states recent­ly. Slow to load apps and data for sev­er­al weeks it final­ly reached the point of being unable to load the App Store for updates.
Google has as many solu­tions for these sorts of prob­lems as there are ways of cre­at­ing them. Every­thing from killing the run­ning apps to ful­ly eras­ing the phone’s mem­o­ry and rebuild­ing it from “like new.” It’s a fraught process. There is a fris­son of dread and hope. You will def­i­nite­ly start with the sim­plest least destruc­tive options but there’s always the ques­tion: What if you have to go all the way?
I found and tried a num­ber of folk reme­dies. Kill all the run­ning apps and then restart the phone. Tap any but­ton at the bot­tom of the App Store app 10 times to clear the cache — that worked for about 10 min­utes. Remove all of your net­work set­tings and reboot your WAP — okay so the WAP was lit­tle wedged, etc. In the end none of these worked. The last non destruc­tive option was a full back­up and restore. And easy but lengthy process that could leave the phone in exact­ly the same bare­ly func­tion­ing state that I had start­ed in. An hour and half lat­er that’s exact­ly what hap­pened.
So there I was — faced with the option of last resort. The nuke and pave. Leav­ing me with a blank phone with­out a sin­gle bit of the per­son­al­i­ty that I’d giv­en it over the last two years. That at once won­der­ful and fright­en­ing prospect of a new start. There is dread. It’s a colos­sal has­sle. You lose every­thing. Every set­ting, every App, every bit of data. Your con­tacts, your text mes­sages, your fit­ness band data, your pho­tos of the dog act­ing idi­ot­ic. All of it. It’s like los­ing your phone only with­out the cost of new hard­ware. A total PITA.
And yet, and yet. It is also an excit­ing prospect. The new, vir­gin ter­rain. All of the mis­cel­la­neous cruft and crap and use­less apps and pass­words for wi-fi points in air­ports you’ll nev­er vis­it again, and oop­sie pic­tures of your feet are gone. You get to start again with a sim­pler, clean­er, less over­whelm­ing device. You will also spend the next week adding back the apps, pass­words, and data that it turns out you were using but had for­got­ten about. You will lose all of your deeply ingrained kinet­ic mem­o­ry, the auto­mat­ic fin­ger press­es and unthink­ing scrolling though the pages to reach the thing that you need.
Still.. new ter­rain. As an adult how often do you get enter new ter­rain for such a small price? Sure you can change jobs, change hous­es, change spous­es, all of which take up a lot more than a lazy Sun­day after­noon babysit­ting a hard­ware reset and a cou­ple of hours of soft­ware updates and restor­ing data and pass­words. And so I did it. Set­tings -> Gen­er­al -> Reset -> Reset All Set­tings and pressed the many pop-up but­tons that con­firmed that I did indeed intend to remake my phone into a pris­tine ver­sion of its now non-functioning self.
We all love the oppor­tu­ni­ty to rein­vent our­selves. Even if it’s only in terms of lit­tle bit of pris­tine elec­tron­ic wilder­ness that we can remake to suit our now two years old­er and wis­er self. New phone wall­pa­per, a clean slate of wi-fi set­tings, and some nifty new apps. — Even if you end up reim­port­ing all of the depress­ing fit­ness band data.

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Books I read in June:

Cleaning Up New York — Bob Rosenthal (1976)

Referred to as a cult clas­sic. I don’t get it. You expect a clean­ing mem­oir to have good sto­ries about clients and the occa­sion­al clean­ing tip. This one has both but doesn’t man­age to make either of them inter­est­ing.* I just don’t see the charm. *

A Man Called Ove — Fredrik Backman (2014)

Ove is 59 years-old. He’s lost both his wife and his job. With­out love or pur­pose left in his life, Ove is try­ing to com­mit sui­cide. Every day he plans a new way out of his now bar­ren life and back to his beloved Son­ja. Every day the peo­ple around him inter­rupt and inter­fere and gen­er­al­ly get in his way. It begins with the arrival of a new neigh­bor, a man who can’t back up a trail­er. A skill that Ove con­sid­ers basic to adult­hood. This Lanky Man and his very preg­nant wife, and two noisy, nosy daugh­ters com­pli­cate Ove’s life in ways that only well-meaning strangers can. His com­fort­able rou­tines and griev­ances take a beat­ing. Along the way he gains new friends, becomes an unlike­ly ally, and dis­cov­ers that not dis­ap­point­ing Son­ja isn’t the only rea­son for doing the right thing.* Because no one with any sense would buy a Renault. *

Nobody’s Fool — Richard Russo (1994)

Sul­ly is a 60ish odd-job man whose life is a bit of a sham­bles. He’s got no steady job, a bum knee, a crazy ex-wife with a grudge, a woman who isn’t actu­al­ly his, and a son who’s sud­den­ly back in his life car­ry­ing along a timid 10 year-old and trou­bles of his own.
The char­ac­ters are lik­able — even the obnox­ious ones, and the sit­u­a­tions only just enough big­ger than real life to make the humor stand out. Rus­so writes with humor and grace and a good deal of respect for the dif­fi­cul­ties of being human.* It must be my month for grumpy old men who find grace. *

Possession — A. S. Byatt (1990)

(I both­er review­ing this only to remind myself not to try read­ing it again.) This is the sec­ond time I’ve start­ed this book and the sec­ond time I’ve stopped at the intro­duc­tion of James Black­ad­der as a nar­ra­tor. I sim­ply can­not abide him. Can not. I know he’s sup­posed to be fun­ny and a sly poke in the eye with a sharp stick for super­an­nu­at­ed aca­d­e­mics. But it’s just too easy and not fun­ny. The book is slow up to that point and the oth­er char­ac­ters are so gen­er­al­ly flat and morose that I put it down one night and just nev­er picked it up again.

* Leav­ing it on the night stand. *

Books I Listened to in June:

The Great Gatsby — F. Scott Fitzgerald (1925)

You all know the sto­ry and prob­a­bly read it in high school, but have you read it (lis­tened to it) late­ly? Fitzgerald’s prose is sharp and on point, even if “old boy” sounds des­per­ate­ly man­nered today. Pret­ti­ly nar­rat­ed by Jake Gyl­len­haal — who makes a con­vinc­ing Nick.* Actu­al­ly a sto­ry for grownups. *

The Complete Sherlock Holmes — Arthur Conan Doyle (1927)

There’s over 50 hours of this one. The short­er sto­ries (often only 15 or 20 min­utes) are an easy thing to sneak into a day of laun­dry and oth­er house chores. And that’s about the right length for a clever Sher­lock Holmes sto­ry. The nov­els are a lit­tle hard­er work to lis­ten to.* Good in small dos­es *

The Lives and Works of the English Romantic Poets — Willard Spiegelman (2013)

One of the Great Cours­es lec­ture series avail­able from Audi­ble. 24 half-hour lec­tures and accom­pa­ny­ing read­ings. Spiegel­man offers good overview of the six 18th/19th cen­tu­ry poets that make up the Eng­lish Roman­tic Move­ment: Wordsworth, Coleridge, Blake, Byron, Shelly, and Keats. It’s easy enough to knock the whole series off in a month. I lis­tened most­ly as a mat­ter of curios­i­ty. Won­der­ing what I had missed by being a Phi­los­o­phy major rather than an Eng­lish major. I think it was worth my time, per­haps not so much because I like the poets being stud­ied but because I learned a bit more about the sys­tem­at­ic study of poet­ry.* If you miss school (and I do.) *

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Once upon a time there was a lit­tle boy who had both a dog and a mon­ster.

This boy spent his sum­mer days with the dog trav­el­ing out with him in the morn­ing and return­ing each after­noon in the hottest part of the day to cool in the shade of the back porch with the glass of lemon­ade pro­vid­ed by the woman known to the adults as The Girl and to the boy as Maya. Maya was unique among the Girls of the neigh­bor­hood in that she agreed with her boy on two sub­jects. One, that the grey dog, called Roy, was the best dog in the neigh­bor­hood and deserved his spot at the north end of the boy’s bed every night. Two, that the mon­ster that took its days in the cool dirt under the back porch stairs and its nights with the dust and stray dog bones under the south end of the boy’s bed was just the right sort of mon­ster for a 10 year-old boy to have. Of course, this also meant that Maya believed in the mon­ster. She was the only adult in Grifter’s Bend who did not sub­scribe to the views of Dr. Sep­tem­ber, the child psy­chol­o­gist. She knew that the mon­sters were as real as the dogs, and the sister’s cats, and the ham­sters in dirty aquar­i­ums that also exist­ed in the boys’ worlds. Our boy, whose name is Duffy Jack­son, is par­tic­u­lar­ly lucky to have Maya in his house from 9 to 6 Mon­day through Sat­ur­day except­ing Wednes­day after­noons, when she goes to see her own mama and get ready for church.

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The title only comes clear in the last few para­graphs of the book. The jour­ney to the singing of the unburied is painful and ten­der all at once. A sto­ry of three gen­er­a­tions of bay­ou peo­ple liv­ing in an enchant­ed, haunt­ed world. …